<http://schema.org/articleBody>
" A great deal of the argument over our old friend, the Keystone XL pipeline, the continent-spanning death funnel that is designed to bring history&amp;#039;s filthiest fossil fuel from the blasted moonscape of northern Alberta, down through the heart of the most arable farmland in the country, and eventually to the refineries of Texas, and thence to the world, has to do with what will happen when the death-funnel leaks. (And it will leak, because pipelines, especially those belonging to TransCanada, always leak.) What gets obscured is the fact that the poisonous glop that this pipeline will carry already is sickening people up in the aforementioned blasted moonscape. MCFN Chief Steve Courtoreille says, &amp;quot;This report confirms what we have always suspected. about the association between environmental contaminants from oil sands production upstream and cancer and other serious illness in our community. The Joint Oil Sands Monitoring Programme has released data about the increases in these contaminants, but fails to address and monitor impacts to First Nations traditional foods. We are greatly alarmed and demand further research and studies are done to expand on the findings of this report.&amp;quot; Findings include generally high concentrations of carcinogenic PAHs (polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons), and heavy metals arsenic, mercury, cadmium, and selenium in kidney and liver samples from moose, ducks, muskrats, and beavers harvested by community members. Bitumen extraction and upgrading is a major emitter of all of these contaminants. Contaminants in wildlife, as well as limited access due to declining water levels, have nearly eliminated the consumption of some traditional foods; fish caught in Lake Athabasca and the Athabasca River are no longer trusted, while muskrat populations have declined precipitously. It&amp;#039;s not just the pipeline. The stuff that the pipeline is going to carry is an environmental catastrophe by its very nature. It is an environmental catastrophe the moment it comes out of the ground, before it is shipped anywhere. Community health and wellbeing have been in sharp decline. The study reveals a link between the Oil Sands and illness in Fort Chipewyan unlike the 2014 cancer report by Alberta Health Service which simply aggregated limited data.. Indeed, cancer occurrence in Fort Chipewyan is positively associated with the consumption of traditional wild foods, including locally caught fish. &amp;quot;Communities are facing a double-bind&amp;quot;, says Stephane McLachlan, head researcher for the study. &amp;quot;On one hand, industry, notably the Oil Sands, causes a substantial decline in the health of the environment and ultimately of community members. On the other hand, the existing healthcare services are unable to address these declines in human health. These Indigenous communities are caught in the middle, and the impacts are clear and worrisome.&amp;quot; This is the catastrophe that the entire Republican party apparatus, the entire conservative media, and more than a couple of nervous Democrats, would like to visit on Native people in the Dakotas and on farmers in Nebraska. Approving this thing in the face of the mounting evidence of what a thoroughgoing disaster you are inviting across our borders is tantamount to dereliction of duty. It is the formal governmental equivalent of dumping LSD in a reservoir. The whole thing is nothing more than international environmental ratfcking. "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a21134/the-poison-up-north/>